The deaths of three U.S. soldiers in a drone strike in Jordan -- the first-known American military fatalities from hostile fire in the widening Middle East crisis -- are likely to increase pressure on President Biden, who has tried to limit the American response in order to keep regional tensions from spreading further. The Biden administration said that the strike at a remote military outpost near the Syrian border -- which also injured 34 other service members -- was carried out by "radical Iran-backed militant groups operating in Syria and Iraq." As Mr. Biden warned that the United States would respond, American officials said that the deaths will require a different level of action from what the White House has ordered in the nearly four months since Israel's war with Hamas sparked broader turmoil in the Middle East. What remained unclear was whether Mr. Biden would strike targets inside Iran itself, as his Republican critics urged him to do, with one saying he would be a "coward" if he did not. A spokesman for Iran's Foreign Ministry, Nasser Kanaani, said at a news conference on Monday that the militias "do not take orders" from Iran and act independently to oppose "any aggression and occupation."

The United States has vowed to take "all necessary actions" to defend American forces after a drone attack killed three U.S. troops in Jordan, while Qatar said it hoped U.S. retaliation would not damage regional security or undercut progress toward a new Gaza hostage-release deal. Sunday's attack by Iran-backed militants was the first deadly strike against U.S. troops since the Israel-Hamas war erupted in October, and marks a major escalation in tensions that have engulfed the Middle East. White House National Security spokesman John Kirby said Monday the United States did not want a wider war with Iran or in the region, "but we got to do what we have to do."

SEAN HANNITY: American soldiers abroad are under attack. Three brave members of the U.S. Army, they were killed. And we had, what, over 40 more injured in a drone attack on a base in Jordan yesterday. One official is now saying that the drone evaded U.S. defenses because it was mistaken for an American drone. Well, that begs the question, what's going on with our military?

Air defenses failed to stop an attack on a U.S. military outpost in Jordan on Sunday that killed three American soldiers at least in part because the hostile drone approached its target at the same time an American drone was returning to the base, two U.S. officials said on Monday. The enemy drone was mistaken for an American surveillance drone returning to the remote resupply base, and air defenses were not immediately engaged, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss preliminary findings of a major cause of the episode. Two other drones that attacked other locations nearby in southeast Syria were shot down, they added. The Wall Street Journal earlier reported the drone mix-up, now at the heart of an investigation by the military's Central Command into the deadly attack that has drawn vows of retaliation from President Biden, raised doubts about American military defenses in the Middle East, and begged anew questions about the administration's efforts to deter attacks by Iran-backed militias against merchant vessels, warships and military bases in the region. The attack on Sunday killed three U.S. Army Reserve soldiers, the first known American military fatalities from hostile fire in the turmoil spilling over from Israel's war with Hamas.

Distributed tactile sensing for multi-force detection is crucial for various aerial robot interaction tasks. However, current contact sensing solutions on drones only exploit single end-effector sensors and cannot provide distributed multi-contact sensing. Designed to be easily mounted at the bottom of a drone, we propose an optical tactile sensor that features a large and curved soft sensing surface, a hollow structure and a new illumination system. Even when spaced only 2 cm apart, multiple contacts can be detected simultaneously using our software pipeline, which provides real-world quantities of 3D contact locations (mm) and 3D force vectors (N), with an accuracy of 1.5 mm and 0.17 N respectively. We demonstrate the sensor's applicability and reliability onboard and in real-time with two demos related to i) the estimation of the compliance of different perches and subsequent re-alignment and landing on the stiffer one, and ii) the mapping of sparse obstacles. The implementation of our distributed tactile sensor represents a significant step towards attaining the full potential of drones as versatile robots capable of interacting with and navigating within complex environments.

We present a new plug-in for the ARGoS swarm robotic simulator to implement the Crazyflie drone, including its controllers, sensors, and some expansion decks. We have based our development on the former Spiri drone, upgrading the position controller, adding a new speed controller, LED ring, onboard camera, and battery discharge model. We have compared this new plug-in in terms of accuracy and efficiency with data obtained from real Crazyflie drones. All our experiments showed that the proposed plug-in worked well, presenting high levels of accuracy. We believe that this is an important contribution to robot simulations which will extend ARGoS capabilities through the use of our proposed, open-source plug-in.

Even before the drone strike that killed three U.S. service members in Jordan on Sunday, the Biden administration was planning for a moment just like this, debating how it might strike back in ways that would deter Iran's proxy forces and send a message that Tehran would not miss. But the options range from the unsatisfying to the highly risky. Mr. Biden could order strikes on the proxy forces, a major escalation of the whack-a-mole attacks it has conducted in recent weeks in Syria, Iraq and Yemen. So far, those attacks have put a dent into the abilities of the Iranian-backed groups that have mounted more than 160 attacks. But they have failed, as Mr. Biden himself noted 10 days ago, to deter those groups.

There have been at least 160 attacks on U.S. troops in the Middle East since mid-October, following this weekend's attack on a base in Jordan near the Syrian border that left three American soldiers dead and dozens of others injured, U.S. officials said. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin addressed Sunday's attack and vowed the U.S. would "take all necessary actions" to keep U.S. troops in the region safe. "Let me start with my outrage and sorrow for the deaths of three brave U.S. troops in Jordan and for the other troops who were wounded," Austin said. He added, "The president and I will not tolerate attack on U.S. forces. And we will take all necessary actions to defend the U.S. and our troops."

Former U.S. Navy SEAL Jonathan Gilliam joined'Fox & Friends First' to discuss what he sees as the'common denominator' to the Biden administration's response to attacks in the Middle East and how it will serve as a'litmus test' in 2024. A U.S. official confirmed to Fox News the drone from an Iranian proxy that killed 3 American service members in Jordan and injured others got past the air defenses for Tower 22 because it was mistaken for a U.S. drone expected to return to the base at the same time. The Wall Street Journal initially reported on this development on Monday. A U.S. official confirmed the information to Fox News. President Biden has vowed to take action against Iranian-backed militants in the Middle East after the drone attack at Tower 22, a post in Jordan near Syria's border, over the weekend.

The United States military announced on Sunday that three US soldiers were killed and at least 34 were wounded in a drone attack targeting Tower 22, a remote logistics outpost near the Jordan-Syrian border. The attack has elicited a strong reaction from Washington with President Joe Biden pledging to hold the attackers to account. The Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an umbrella group of Iran-backed armed groups in the region, claimed the attacks, saying it was in response to US support to Israel's war on Gaza, which has killed more than 26,000 people. Tower 22, which houses a small US logistics outpost, is located in Jordan's northeast close to the borders with Iraq and Syria. Public information about the outpost is limited.